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In timely and incisive analysis, our experts parse the latest development news and devise practical solutions to new and emerging challenges. Our events convene the top thinkers and doers in global development.

I’m pleased to be on this list of “top economist” signatories of an open letter to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon endorsing the simple idea that economic growth should be the foundation stone on which the other Sustainable Development Goals, especially poverty reduction, are built.

Two main objections have been raised (by the High Level Panel on Post-2015, for example) to including an income inequality target in the post-2015 framework. One is technical, namely the claim that there isn’t a good enough measure of inequality. I don’t take this very seriously. Is this one area of measurement too complex?

Recentthinking around the post-2015 development agenda has focused on the goals and targets of a follow-on set of Millennium Development Goals for the period 2010–2030. These are important discussions that have clarified potential areas for goals and the plausibility of particular targets. But another approach to the post-2015 agenda is to think about what would replace the Millennium Declaration itself.

CGD has just posted a policy paper by Sarah Dykstra and me on Millennium Development Goal 8 (that would be the one on a “global partnership for development”) and lessons for post-2015. It is an updated version of a paper we submitted to the High-Level Panel on post-2015 (available here) focused on what we thought should go into their Goal 12 (“Create a Global Enabling Environment and Catalyze Long-Term Finance”). It won’t take more than a cursory comparison of our paper and the HLP report to see we were less than completely persuasive!

Up to now, the High Level Panel on the Post-2015 Development Agenda (sadly still not widely AKA the HiPoPoDomAe) has done a pretty good job of displaying public collegiality. But in the lead-up to today’s Panel meetings in New York, that began to break down. A story in the Guardian suggested that drafts of the report have been described as “absolutely awful&

There’s a lot of interest in an ‘employment goal’ as part of the post-2015 agenda. That makes sense. Ask people what they’re most concerned about worldwide and it is jobs and the economy. Ask politicians what they’re most concerned about and employment will come high up the list.

Last week saw the High Level Panel on the Post-2015 Agenda meeting in Liberia. Apparently various panel members used the occasion to lay out their vision for goals and targets for 2030. And according to Save the Children’s Brendan Cox, there was a lot of discussion around the “fact that we can get to zero on so many issues.” Save the Children’s very interesting report on post-2015 is heavy on